A Mississippi jury awarded the family of New York Mets prospect Brian Cole, who was killed in an accident while driving an Explorer, $131 million from Ford Motor Co.
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE68203520100903
This isn’t the first settlement of its kind that Ford had had to pay. It reportedly has shelled out a large sum of money for settlements in wrongful death cases involving its Explorer, which has a long history of fatal accidents.
The attorney for Cole’s family, Tab Turner, told Reuters said that after the jury rendered its verdict, the family reached a settlement with Ford. The terms of that settlement were’s disclosed, but the case in general was worth more than some other rollover lawsuits because of Cole’s profession as a ball player.
Ford had argued that Cole had been speeding, driving 80 mph, when he went off the road in a 2001 rollover accident and was killed. Cole, 22, wasn’t wearing a seat belt. He died in the Florida Panhandle while on his way from home to Mississippi.
The auto maker also contended that it would have won the case if the jury hadn’t excluded some evidence.
“This was a tragic accident and our sympathy goes out to the Cole family, for their loss, but it was unfair of them to blame Ford,” a spokeswoman for the auto maker said.
Ford had ended its lengthy partnership with Firestone in 2001, the same year as Cole’s accident, blaming the tiremaker for rollovers and blowouts that caused a number of fatal accidents involving the Explorer.
That SUV seemed to have left a legacy of death. The details and fatal statistics involving the Explorer are chronicled in a book by Adam L. Penenberg, “Tragic Indifference: One Man’s Battle with the Auto Industry Over the Danger of SUVs.”
Some of the data about the Explorer from Penenberg’s book were plucked out, and credited, by this posting on TheModerateVoice.com.
http://themoderatevoice.com/85085/ford-settles-after-jury-awards-131m-in-roll-over-accident/
